“… What Carmelo Anthony and Friends did at The ESPYS, a moment that was important but took great pains to make a statement that offended no one. It wasn’t what the belated Michael Jordan did on this website when he announced he was donating money to groups representing the interests of black people and the police. To paraphrase Peter Tosh, they asked for peace while Kaepernick cried out for justice. That distinction is both subtle and significant.”

In essence, Jones highlighted the vast difference between Kaepernick’s silent yet paradigm-shifting act of defiance and the carefully crafted PSA-like statement issued by a collective group of superstar athletes.

Jones told Martin the 49ers quarterback’s protest “is not an attempt to or a request from the majority of the establishment to co-sign what he is saying. He seems to fully understand that if he is out here alone on this one, he is out here alone, and this is a fight he is willing to take up.”

Jones added the manner in which Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James approached their protest action and “parsed their words” ensured “nobody was going to lose a dime.”

“You are going to lose some people when you do something like this, it’s not a situation where you’re going to do this and everybody loves you in the end. They don’t love you for these things until after you’ve died.”

Martin asked the sports analyst about the Bleacher Report article that details a number of NFL executives who have called Kaepernick a traitor, saying they would not sign him if the opportunity presented itself. Jones said, “Itdoesn’t surprise me at all that an opinion that isn’t that far from the median opinion of Americans would also be possessed by people who are in the front offices in the NFL.”